Page 120 - REALLY What A time Book IX

REALLY SO WHAT
What A Time

SCHOOL

I can’t say school was fun, but It was okay. We studied;
learned to write cursive, not printing, did arithmetic, reading,
history and geography all in a classical form. That is the
teacher speaks and directs; students follow. Few children knew
how to read when they entered first grade. Later, after
television was introduced many children could read before
they entered school. I was never a fast reader.

Grading was simple A through E, good to bad. I had the
interest of a solid ‘C’ student. Teaching methods didn’t pick
up steam and change until after the decade was over.
At one point we all got a small six inch ruler. That was pretty
neat. Some of the nerdy kids had gotten into Morris Code.
That was great fun. Sitting in back of the class we could send
code messages to each other, right in the middle of class.

Dash, full length of the ruler. Dot, short end.
(. _ _ , . . . . , . _ , _ , . _, _ , . . , _ _ , . ) It read like this:

(Dot Dash Dash, Dot Dot Dot Dot, Dot Dash, Dash, Dot
Dash, Dash, Dot Dot, Dash Dash, Dot)

I suspect teachers knew pretty much what was going on in
their classes, and they must have been pleased with the
creativity. It didn’t even disrupt the class.
Sometimes student ingenuity was more of a problem and a bit
more difficult to deal with. We had a patrol system, where
kids got a chance to help control street crossing. They would

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